AOC Laughs Off Trump’s Suggestion She’s Jealous of Squad Sisters

(Bloomberg) -- Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded by “crying with laughter” at President Donald Trump’s suggestion that she feels overshadowed by other members of the cohort of female, left-leaning first-term Democrats known as the Squad.

Trump tweeted late Friday that Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota are becoming the face of the Democratic Party, adding, “Cortez (AOC) is fuming, not happy about this!”

The Trump tweet came among a string of messages commenting on Israel’s decision Friday to allow Tlaib to visit her family -- notably, her elderly grandmother -- in the West Bank, for humanitarian reasons, a day after barring her from entering the country.

Trump said Israel was “respectful & nice” to Tlaib. He used inverted commas to refer to Tlaib’s 90-year-old grandmother, Mufitya Tlaib.

When Tlaib turned down Israel’s offer to let her visit the West Bank only under certain restrictions, Trump commented that “the only real winner here is Tlaib’s grandmother. She doesn’t have to see her now!”

Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Omar, along with Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts -- all representatives in their first term and all women of color -- have referred to themselves as the Squad. They’ve been targets of Trump over the past month, after he suggested the four should “go back” to their “broken and crime infested places” of origin.

Three of the four were born in the U.S.; all are American citizens, as required to serve in Congress. Tlaib was born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrant parents.

The @AOC response to Trump’s tweet, with it’s lone laughing emoji, has been liked about 175,000 times on Twitter so far, the most in almost two weeks.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hailey Waller in New York at hwaller@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Ludden at jludden@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny, Linus Chua